Who would enjoy this book? Anyone needing a fresh burst of inspiration in the dinner department. There's enough in this book to keep a curious cook inspired for months.

Quick Facts

• Who wrote it: David Joachim

• Who published it: Oxmoor House

• Number of recipes: 150

• Other highlights: You know how sometimes when you find a good cookbook, you just know it? That's how I feel about this cookbook. Paging through it, I'm just getting more and more excited. I feel an urgent need to clear my schedule and cook. The colors on every page are so vibrant — everything just pops off the page like eye candy. The recipes feel authentic, but also accessible. I especially love the photographic introduction to potentially unfamiliar ingredients at the beginning of each chapter (photo in the gallery above).

I also feel like this cookbook introduces us to cuisines and specific dishes that don't usually get much playtime in international cookbooks like this. As an example, the "Southeast Asia & Australia" chapter includes dishes from not just Thailand and Vietnam, as is often typical, but also foods from Malaysia, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Laos. There also seems to be a real effort to include dishes familiar to a Western audience (like Pad Thai and Hungarian Goulash) as well as those only natives or adventurous travelers might know (like Salt Cod à la Brá from Portugal and Irio/Mashed Peas and Potatoes from Kenya).

I did a double-take when typing up this post and I realized that this cookbook is from Cooking Light. Health and diet are definitely not the focus of this book — though don't take this to mean that the recipes aren't healthy. They're just healthy in the way that foods prepared with fresh, wholesome ingredients are naturally healthy. I give this approach a big thumbs up.

Find the book at your local library, independent bookstore, or Amazon: Global Kitchen by David Joachim

Apartment Therapy Media makes every effort to test and review products fairly and transparently. The views expressed in this review are the personal views of the reviewer and this particular product review was not sponsored or paid for in any way by the manufacturer or an agent working on their behalf. However, the manufacturer did give us the product for testing and review purposes.